


Restless Night

by Bizarra



Series: Come Healing Universe [6]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Chakotay & Tom Paris friendship, Come Healing 'verse, Episode: s07e01 Unimatrix Zero Part II, F/M, charlie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21738469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bizarra/pseuds/Bizarra
Summary: Chakotay and Tom watch over their loved ones after they're rescued from the Borg ship.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Series: Come Healing Universe [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476011
Comments: 7
Kudos: 60
Collections: Come Healing Universe: Collected Works





	Restless Night

A Come Healing _Unimatrix Zero_ add-on

The lowered lighting in sickbay hid the man who stood in the shadows watching the pair sleep peacefully on a biobed. He exhaled a deep breath of relief. She was safe. She was healing. She was home.

Chakotay leaned back onto the empty bed behind him as he kept watch. He glanced at the other beds, their occupants also sleeping off the nightmarish events of the day. Tuvok had been the most severely impacted of the three away team members. They’d gone to a Borg cube and allowed themselves to be assimilated. Willingly handing themselves over to the enemy, and landing Chakotay in a personal torment of his own, having to sit back and watch it unfold. It was a day that he wished to forget, but one he knew would inevitably haunt him for years to come. 

Distantly he heard the hiss of the doors as they opened and closed, but paid no attention until someone stopped next to him. “Couldn’t sleep?” The voice belonged to Tom Paris.

Chakotay shook his head, “No.”

“Me neither.” Voyager’s young pilot admitted. “Every time I close my eyes I see, well, I suppose you see the same thing.”

Chakotay silently nodded. He gestured toward the bed that contained the younger of the three. A woman he considered very much a sister. “How is she doing?”

Tom shrugged. “She hasn’t really come out of it yet, but Doc says she should be more coherent tomorrow.” He gestured to the bed Chakotay had been watching, “What about her?”

Chakotay glanced downward. “You know the Captain. She tried to get the Doctor to let her out of here tonight, but he refused, saying she needed at least one night under his observation. Kathryn wasn’t pleased that I agreed with him.”

The younger man gave a knowing grin. His smile faded as he turned serious. “How about you? Are you okay?”

Chakotay looked Tom in the eyes, “I am now.” He tugged on his ear and let his gaze move back to the bed. “For a while though, I wasn’t. What about you?”

He felt the man shuffle from one foot to the other. “It’s hard loving women who don’t think twice about diving headfirst into danger. I mean, I would never stop B’Elanna from doing what she needs to do, but damn she scared me today.”

“Yeah.” Chakotay agreed. “Kathryn will always be in danger; a target. All I can do is support her, protect her when I can, and be here for her when she needs it.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare the hell out of me each time she’s put in that position.”

The man next to him gave a slight laugh. Out of the corner of his eye, Chakotay saw his friend nod toward the bed. “Is he going to be okay? He was pretty shaken when he saw her earlier.”

Chakotay sighed. He never meant for Charlie to see his mother like that; looking very much like a living corpse; tubes and metal attached to her grey mottled skin. He hadn’t known the boy was camped out in sickbay. As soon as the team had been beamed back, he had rushed down here and found Sam Wildman holding a struggling and screaming Charlie, desperate to reach his mother. In his haste, he’d angrily dressed down the woman — who’d been a godsend to them since they’d gotten his son — thinking she’d brought the boy to sickbay with her. He needed to apologize profusely tomorrow.

“He hasn’t left his mother’s side since she came out of surgery.” Chakotay bent and scuffed his feet against the floor. “He’s tucked himself into her like that since the day I found them in that lab.”

Tom nodded. “He’s your son, Chakotay. Protecting that woman is in his blood.”

Chakotay bent his head and smiled. “She calls him her ‘snuggle bug’.”

Tom chuckled. “My mother called me ‘trouble with a capital Thomas’.”

Chakotay laughed then. The first time without force since Kathryn had left the ship. “I can’t say that she was wrong.”

Tom followed the laughter with that of his own. “Looking back, I can’t argue with her either.”

Satisfied that their family was healing and would soon be whole again, Chakotay gave the younger man a clap on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s let them sleep.” He walked them to the Sickbay doors. “Why don’t we head to the bridge. We’ve got some carpets to clean.”

Part of Tom’s answering comment was heard as the doors closed behind the two men. “What is this we…”


End file.
